International Permafrost Association Country Reports

Sweden

At the University of Lund, The GeoBiosphere Science Centre continued/expanded activities in the Abisko area. The “Nordic centre for Studies of Ecosystem Carbon exchange and its interaction with the Climate system”(NECC) has got two monitoring sites in the area. A new installation for calibration of remote sensing data has been established at the Abisko-Jokka delta (Eklund / Schubert). The CARBOMONT project-“Effects of land-use changes on sources, sinks and fluxes of carbon in European mountain areas” and the ELSA project “Exchange processes between the land surface and the atmosphere” have activities in the Abisko area, especially in and around the Stordalen bog.

The old “IPA Abisko area active layer transect” is being maintained. J. Åkerman and M. Johansson are still maintaining 10 of the originally 12 CALM sites along the 100 km east-west transect.

The new boreholes - 6 and 16 meter deep drilled close to the old boreholes established in the 1980s by J. Åkerman continue to deliver data. Preliminary results show that the permafrost thickness is shrinking from below as well as from above. The snow manipulation experiment at a peat mire 6 km east of Abisko, northernmost Sweden is still running and the monitoring programme has this year been extended. At the manipulation site, projected future changes in snow depth are simulated and the impacts on permafrost and vegetation are being monitored. This summer, monitoring of greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, N2O) was initiated by J. Bosiö (a new PhD student)."

The Arctic Council of Ministers has requested a report on the current status of various aspects of the Arctic’s Cryosphere. The major sections are the Greenland Ice Sheet, Arctic Sea Ice and the Terrestrial Cryosphere, which consists of the chapters Snow, Permafrost, Glaciers and Ice Caps, Hydrology. Sweden together with Canada is coordinating the terrestrial Cryosphere component and Sweden (T. Callaghan and M. Johansson) is leading the snow and permafrost chapters. The project will finish by the end of 2010.

A new project entitled “The Greenland Analogue Project” on Greenland’s west coast, east of Kangerlussuaq, has been initiated (L. Claesson Liljedahl and J.-O. Näslund). GAP is a multilateral project, which is funded by the Swedish, Finnish and Canadian Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Companies (SKB, Posiva and NWMO). GAP involves researchers from universities and geological surveys in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. The project includes a subproject on groundwater chemistry/flow and permafrost in the bedrock by bedrock drilling. Two boreholes (220 and 340 meters) were drilled close to the ice sheet this summer. The boreholes are monitored for temperature, pressure and conductivity, and preliminary results indicate that the permafrost goes deeper than 300 meters at a distance of ca 500 meters from the ice sheet. The results from the bedrock drilling will be used in the planning of a deep bedrock drilling (ca 500-700 meters) close to the ice margin and in under the ice sheet, which will be drilled in order to study the groundwater flow, chemistry and permafrost conditions.

During the year we lost Dr. Richard Åhman, a well known Nordic Palsa specialist and Dr. Bo Malmström who worked with frost mounds and other periglacial forms in Sweden and Norway.